I've never had a public training journal, so this should be interesting! I've recently signed up for the UK Ironman in Bolton - a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile cycle followed by a 26.2 mile run. I've got ~7 months to train and I'm hoping to do it in sub 14. Training is a little all over the place at the moment, one of my main goals is to work out a proper schedule for it.

If all goes to plan, I'll be posting all my work out logs, and all of my nutrition. Nutrition logs will be a new one for me!

It's 2am here and I thought I'd put a quick post in before hitting the pillow.

I just signed up for two more events - a half marathon and a 50k ultra, which puts my race schedule for 2012 looking like this:

March 25th - Half MarathonJuly 22nd - IronmanOctober 7th - 50k Ultra

Somewhat nervous, I'm slightly worried that I've piled on too much. But it's given me three goals which I've always wanted to hit - so I can't back out now!

Since signing up it's felt like a prolonged day 0, lots of research and learning for the long weeks ahead. Tomorrow morning I plan on putting up a day #0 picture and statistics, then head out for a run + do that whole diet and meal plan thing I've heard so much about. Looking forward to it!

AM - 28.4km cycle ~50 minutes. Forgot to stopclock it, a mistake which will be rectified.

PM - *Planned ab set*, will edit once completed.

Food

Breakfast ( before cycle ) - lentils + vegetables

After cycle - two bananas + lentils

Lunch - Pasta

Dinner - Brown rice + grilled mushroom, pepper and onion

Snacks - Celery sticks, peanuts

Comments

Had a headache most of the day after coming back from my cycle, not sure what went wrong - everything pre, during and post was as normal and it was a standard route. I think it might be that I haven't done much exercise over Christmas and was a shock to the system.

Breakfast was odd today - been away from home the last two weeks, so coming back to realise I had nothing breakfast capable in my cupboards meant I ate food from last night.

All in all, a good start. Tomorrow I plan an AM run, PM is currently undecided.

I missed blogging on Tuesday + Wednesday! I had a full day assessment centre / job interview Wednesday, so aside from a quick shoulder set on Tuesday morning I was too busy preparing for the interview to do anything. Nutrition slipped a little too.

Thankfully I don't have anything else like this planned, so I'll be piling the training back on now.

Tuesday

Shoulder set AM :

Wide grip pull ups - 5, 5, 5, 4

Chin ups - 7, 7, 4

Narrow grip pull ups - 2

Nutrition:

Breakfast - bran flakes.

Lunch - curried lentils + brown rice, two bananas, salted peanuts

Dinner - pasta

I had a pretty hefty cupcake as well, at the time I put it down to stressing over an interview the next day

Wednesday

No exercise today! Woke up at normal gym time and worked on interview technique instead, once I got home from my assessment I crashed out and woke up a few hours later.

Nutrition

Breakfast - bran flakes

Lunch - pitta breads, hummus + salsa

Dinner - Pasta

Dinner lately has always been plain pasta, I've been a little tired going from a lazy routine over Christmas to a proper routine again. So once I fall back into place I think it'll start getting a lot more interesting.

Rest - Since getting back from the gym I'd felt absolutely wrecked, I think with the job interview during the week and not eating very well, everything had caught up with me. I went for a 30 minute nap at 2pm to wake up 6 hours later. I don't think I'd been listening to my body enough the last week.

Saturday

Scheduled rest day, aside from a couple of pull up sets here and there ( bar is always on door, so whenever I walk past I'll do a couple ) I relaxed.

Looks like I'm pretty bad at daily updates. This will have to change me thinks! Getting in from work + training and crashing out, but once I get into the mindset of updates not being too difficult, I'll update on the regular.

Monday - Chest

AM

Dumbbell bench press

6kg - 21 x210kg - 1514kg - 12 x410kg - 156kg - 21

Tri pull downs ( using some matrix machine cordy thing )

17.5lb - 21DipsHeadcrushers27.5 - 1217.5 - 21

Dips

-32kg - 5, 3

Headcrushers

10kg - 1220kg - 12, 12, 510kg - 21

PM

4.2 mile run - 38 minutes

It was my first time doing bench press with dumbbells and headcrushers, so I didn't try to push the weight too much - kept it low and tried to get the technique right. Next Monday I'll start pushing it.

Tuesday - Back

Deadlifts

10kg - 21 x215kg - 12 x225kg - 8 x215kg - 1210kg - 21, 5 stretch

ABBBBDOMINALS

sit ups - 12crunches - 12obliques - 12, 12rotation sit ups - 12, 12

PM

7.5 mile run - 1.16.35

First time I've ever done deadlifts, so I kept the weight low and I'll be building up slowly.

Wednesday - Arms

Curls (reps per arm)

6kg - 21 x210kg - 12 x212kg - 8 x28kg - 126kg - 21

Chin ups - 5, 3

Hammers (reps per arm)

8kg - 21 12kg - 1216kg - 812kg - 128kg - 21 x26kg - 21

Barbell wrist curls (behind back)

15kg - 21 x35 stretch set

Ordered some soy protein isolate today! Before now all my protein has come from food, so I'm hoping to start improving a little more with the increased intake.

New Goal

Update every day - do not allow cascade posts. Doing this will also allow me to put in my nutrition - I forget what I've eaten after a couple of hours, let alone a few days! Maybe I should start writing that down too?

So if all goes to plan, I'll be seeing you lovely people again tomorrow-Chris

I just decided to use 'the cloud' to log my nutrition. Kind of. I've tried various solutions in the past from using mpamyrun.com and nutrition.self.me, but they were never versatile enough and I hated the set up involved in order to write in recipes.

To combat this, I'm now using google dox to write each food I intake. It's not as good as self.me because I don't get any nutrition data unless I calculate it.

I do however own a website on the tinterwebs, and being a software engineer I don't see why I couldn't design and build my own platform for this sort of stuff, as buggy as it might be in the beginning.

So that's my current plan for nutrition, thought you would all like to know!

Cool, please keep us all updated on how this current form of logging your nutrition is working for you. I have also used nutrition.self.me and others and I always give it because I eat so many things that aren't in the system that it takes forever to go through and list all of the nutritional info for everything I ate.

Sure! I'll be starting slow - just going to start logging which foods I'm eating, then after a week or two begin noting down weights, once that becomes comfortable start doing some real number works on them, but I'll keep progress noted as I update the journal.

Today was squats in the gym - I messed up swim timetable for the local pool and missed the lane hours, but I now know for tomorrow, so it shouldn't happen again.

Squatz

Front squatz

20kg - 21 x240k - 12 x2

*put the weight back on my back after this point*

Back squatz40kg - 1260kg - 8, 12, 12, 12, 5 stretch.

Comments

Front squats are...weird. I won't be keeping them up during Thursday sessions, but I might condition for them outside of that in case I decide I want to do them in future - does anyone have any tips for them? Whenever I had the weight firmly on my shoulders it pressed against my throat and that was a little uncomfortable, is this something I'll just have to get used to?

This week I've had to pass on a lot of evening sessions, but I know this week I'm going to have to start going to them or I'll fall behind on my schedule.

24's was pretty fun, we used it as a warm up - next week we'll be doing it on sqaut, deads and shoulder days. Probably going to up the weight a little - I felt like I was throwing 10kg around a little bit too much.

Well, today was tough. Feeling toast right now - writing this then probably going to hit the pillow!

The swim yesterday didn't happen, mixed up my timetables and went when water polo had booked up the pool.

Chest - AM

Dumbell bench

6kg - 218kg - 2114kg - 1518kg - 8, 7, 7, 410kg - 156kg - 21

Tri pull downs22.5lbs - 21dips,skullcrushers22.5lbs - 2112.5lbs - 21

Dips36kg deducted - 3, 2

Skull Crushers10kg - 1215kg - 820kg - 5, 415kg - 1210kg - 5 stretch

Run - Lunch

4.2 miles - 37.28. Put me at just under 9min/miles so I'm pretty happy with it.

Swim - PM

No set routine, just started working on front crawl technique and 'getting used to the water' making sure I have a better plan for the next time I go

Comments

Arms and chest have been feeling dead since this morning, walking is an interesting feeling. Squats tomorrow should be...fun?

I'm cycling a century at the weekend! Meeting up with some other local cyclists to do ~75 miles, and it's a 25 mile round trip for me to get to the meeting point. Hopefully my aerobic base is as strong as I'd like to hope it is, just nailing down the nutrition for it and I should be okay.

Tomorrow - squats, run, squash (if I haven't keeled over and died by then)